User blog:Buckmana/Animals I have known
This is an article about animals I've known during my life. Keep in mind some of these photos are a bit old and given the relatively short lifespan of animals, some of them are no longer in the land of the living. Let's start with my pets: Sleepy This was my dog, a mixed breed Jack Russell Terrier. I have no idea who the father was, the mother got out and came back pregnant. Since the puppies were not purebred, the owners sold them cheap at a school market. I also bred cavies, but more for intelligence then breed standards, which is why I often ended up with a mixed breed animal. Fuzzy The eldest guinea pig, not very sociable. Named for the distinctive fur pattern (it's a show breed feature). Squeaky I named him this because he was the most vocal of my cavies, he was not shy in letting you know he'd spotted you from his cage. Patches Named for the multitude of colored patches he had. Holly Named after the country Holland, since she's (mostly) a Dutch (breed) cavy. She was the smartest one I had, very readily trainable. . Yes, if they've got the right mix of sociability and intelligence, they do respond well to training. She wasn't one of my bred cavies however, I got her as a breeding mate for one of my males. Midget He was the end of the line, the last one I managed to breed. He was a litter runt, but because he showed signs of high intelligence, I chose to keep him. He's the only cavy who readily accepted wearing the leash harness: Midget on a leash This was because he was smart enough to realize if I was putting it on him, he was going to be allowed to leave his cage and explore the garden. I stayed in a number of rental properties and usually, the landlord's children had pets. Minnie and Olivia Minnie is a 4 year old mixed breed dog. Olivia, despite her size, is barely out of the kitten stage, she's less then a year old. Interestingly, the dogball in the picture belongs to Olivia, not Minnie. Minnie was afraid of it, but Olivia was quite fond of chasing it. Minnie was raised to be tolerant of cats, so she readily accepted their presence. She would even let Olivia share her doggybed. Olivia on the roof This is Olivia looking at me from the roof of my flat. Oddly, she took a very long time to learn that cats could actually climb trees and get to high places by doing so. Pretty much up until then, she'd stayed on the ground. For the rest of the pictures, visit the album directly. Cats album There's too many for me to want to link them all. But I will tell you about the cats in them. Mishka was a 2 year old Russian blue (mostly). She was a very socialable cat, always coming by to say hello and get attention. Not sure what breed Milkshake was, but he was less socialable. A 1 year old male with aggression issues, because he was always killing local animals if they were small enough. And sometimes not, somehow he got a hold of half a possum once. I'm not sure if he killed it himself, but if it was an adult, he was darn lucky. A full grown possum is quite capable of killing an adult cat if enraged. The hot water heater in the photos was a point of competition for the cats. In winter, they would fight over who got to use it. Also, they often had arguments over the brown cushion I kept in my apartment. They didn't like to share it. I originally got it for putting it on an armchair, but given how much the cats liked it, I eventually just left it on the floor for them. For some reason, Mishka persisted in grooming Milkshake. He'd often give me this look that said "I'm putting up with this, but I don't like it". You can see that in one of the photos Mishka grooming Milkshake Ironically, the superstition about black cats seems to have been inverted for me. Every black cat I knew was incredibly friendly. Conversely, every white cat I knew was quite unsocialable. There was even one cat lovers would have gleefully kicked if they'd ever gotten their hands on it. It took perverse delight in tormenting all the neighborhood dogs (including my own) and it even tried to kill my cavies. WHILE THEY WERE INSIDE THEIR CAGES! At the time, there was a tortoiseshell cat living down the street from me. It was incredibly timid and skittish. One day, I see this cat go full on aggression with the white cat everyone hated. I wondered what kind of provocation had caused such a placid cat that feared confrontation to cause it to become so violent towards the white cat. Category:Blog posts